Building on the success of the season-opening Dartmouth Invite, the women's golf team had another positive experience this weekend at the Yale Invitational in New Haven. The women placed two golfers in the top ten, and finished fifth as a team in a field of fourteen.
Meredith Johnson '98 (85-84) and Lauren Epstein '00 (86-83) led the way as they tied for tenth place with scores of 169.
The Big Green's team score of 720 was 48 strokes behind the leader and host, Yale, which finished with a score of 672. Rutgers, always powerful, and Hartford took second and third place, while Wofford College, road-tripping up from South Carolina, claimed fourth.
Katie Shields of Boston College took medalist honors firing rounds of 80 and 73.
Both Dartmouth and Yale claim to have the oldest college golf course in the country, but the similarities between the Hanover Country Club and the Yale Golf Course end there.
"Yale's course is at least five shots harder than Hanover's," said Coach Izzy Johnson. "It is a great course, but very challenging. It has a way of intimidating first time players."
In addition to being a slightly longer course than what the NCAA prefers for women, Yale's 5,905 yard course has huge greens and is full of dips and other hazards.
The first three holes let a golfer know right away what he or she is in for as the first is played over a huge hollow, the second over a sand trap, and the third over a small lake. In addition, the second and third holes are very long. Unfortunately for the uninitiated, the course gets harder from there. The ninth and eighteenth holes are referred to as the "famous Yale holes" by experienced golfers and are reputed to be the most difficult on the course.
Cara Mathews '99, playing the Yale course for the first time, said that the ninth hole lived up to its reputation. It is a par 3 at 150 yards that is played over water, and it also has a green that is 50 yards in length, with a 6 foot drop in the middle.
"If you are on the wrong end of that green, you are in for it," Epstein said, who also spoke respectfully about the second and eighth holes.
"Number two and number eight were both very intimidating," she said. "On your approach shots to the green, you just can't hit it left or you will end up in a bunker which will probably take a good two or three tries to get out of."
Dartmouth's success on a course this formidable can be attributed at least in part to the women's mental approach to the weekend, part of which included breaking the course and meet down into a series of attainable goals rather than scaring themselves with thoughts about the difficult holes or opponents.
"We didn't go to Yale this weekend expecting to beat Yale on their home course, but we did want to finish in the top three or four, and we did want to play well individually," said Mathews. "We have goals for the team, the individual, each nine, each hole, and each shot, and that's the way you have to face the tournament, not whether or not you're going to win."
As a team, the women focus on staying ahead of schools like Boston College and Boston University, and try to beat Hartford, who Captain Meredith Johnson says "tends to beat us."
Johnson also explained that the Yale course is manageable if approached in the right way.
"Rather than trying to make miraculous shots, you need to just try and aim for the middle of greens and if something great happens from there you are all set," she said. "It becomes hard because of blind shots, and if you happen to hit it where you don't want to, it usually means severe trouble."
"It is the kind of course where you have to accept bogies on a few of the very hard or intimidating holes, and then try to make up for it on some of the easier more playable holes," Epstein said.
Coach Johnson noted that she was looking at the Yale trip as a building tournament.
"It is the kind of course you can get really frustrated on but the gals kept their spirits up," she said.
